emPower! is the world’s first electronic focusing eyeglasses

PixelOptics, an eyewear company has just announced that their award winning emPower! eyeglasses that they unveiled at CES 2011 this year, will be available for purchase very soon. What’s so special about these glasses is that they are the world’s first electronic focusing eyeglasses – no longer will wearers be limited to the fixed focusing capabilities of their regular spectacles. If you find yourself switching between two pairs of glasses for different purposes i.e. one for reading, and one for the TV that’s further away, or if you have to take off your glasses and put them back on again all the time, emPower! is for you. These specially designed spectacles contain a special LCD-like layer that can be turned on and off to aid with short distance focusing. Switch them on to read a book in front of you and turn them off to make them regular long sighted glasses again for you to see in the distance. How does it work? Well, the LCD-like layer on the lens is built to change its molecular stricter whenever you power it up, changing the focus of the glasses instantly and silently. It comes with an automatic mode that detects when you need to use it, as well as a manual mode for you to turn it on or off yourself. Innovative? You bet. The only problem I can see with these glasses is the need to charge yet another device, since it runs on battery. But with an expected battery life of 2-3 days, you won’t need to charge these glasses every day. The PixelOptics emPower! isn’t available yet, but it will be launched in mid-March this year at the Vision Expo East in New York City, so prices should be made known by then. Head here for more details on these amazing spectacles.